The EPA Apps for the Environment Challenge
Submission Deadline
Submissions are ClosedContact
Prizes
- Best Overall App (Winner and Runner Up)
- Best Student App (Winner and Runner Up)
- Popular Choice App
The Winners and Runner Ups of each category will all be invited to Washington, D.C. to a recognition event where they will demonstrate their apps to EPA officials and, possibly, to the EPA Administrator, Lisa Jackson. In addition, EPA will feature the apps of the Winners and Runners Up on the EPA website for a full year.
Light Bulb Finder
Hootroot
EarthFriend
Environmental Justice Participatory Mapping
CG SEARCH
Background
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is launching Apps for the Environment -- a challenge to encourage development of innovative environmental applications. EPA wants to engage students, colleges and universities, and software developers across the U.S. to create useful solutions that can help inform communities about protecting people’s health and the environment.
Description
The Apps for the Environment challenge invites creative developers to build applications to help people understand environmental conditions that could impact health, and help communities make informed decisions about environmental impacts. The EPA is not specifying exactly what kind of app they are looking for or what it needs to do - other than be creative, widely useful, and use EPA data fairly to address health or environmental problems.
For more information and helpful resources, please check out EPA's Apps for the Environment webpage.
Review Panel
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- Angela Brown
- U.S. EPA/Region 5
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- John Cunningham
- U.S. EPA/OSWER
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- Lisa Garcia
- U.S. EPA/OEJ
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- Cynthia Giles
- U.S. EPA/OECA
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- Michael Gill
- U.S. EPA/Region 9
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- Thomas Gross
- U.S. EPA/OW
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- Duane James
- U.S. EPA/Region 9
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- Ellen Manges
- U.S. EPA/OSWER
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- Peter Preuss
- U.S. EPA/ORD
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- Karen Reshkin
- U.S. EPA/Region 5
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- Moshay Simpson
- U.S. EPA/OECA
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- Matthew Small
- U.S. EPA/Region 9
Evaluation Criteria
- Usefulness
- Each submission will be rated on the strength of its potential to help individuals and/or communities make informed decisions about the environment and/or human health.
- Innovativeness
- Each submission will be rated for the degree of new thinking it brings to applications for the environment or human health, and the creativity shown in designing for impact.
- Usability
- Each submission will be rated on its user-friendliness and interactive capabilities.
- Preference will be given to applications that are easily accessible to a range of consumers, including those with disabilities.
Resources
- The EPA on Challenge.gov
- Apps for the Environment
- Resources for accessing federal government data and Web services.
- A subset of EPA data sets
- Web services for accessing and using EPA data
- Ideas for Apps
- A list of identified user needs that could potentially be addressed by apps that use EPA data
- Existing environmental apps that use EPA data